“One Departs, One Remains” — A juvenile osprey leaves the nest while its sibling remains.
This is a bit of a serendipitous photograph. I had been photographing landscape subjects since before dawn, but the early light had now dissipated. I figured I was done for the morning, so I shouldered my gear and started ambling in a direction that would take me back to my vehicle. Along the way I saw a little side path marked “dead end” that led toward the water, so I thought I’d take a look. A few feet later I was through some brush and on a rocky beach. A woman was there photographing, and she pointed out two juvenile ospreys at a nest atop a rocky formation just offshore.
“Monterey Cypress Forest” — Fog drifts across a Point Lobos landscape of Monterey cypress trees.
This grove of leaning and twisted trees lines the upper edge of a steep, rocky Point Lobos cliff that drops straight to a small bay. You can see the beginning of the slope in the photograph, but if you walked past the trees in this scene you would seen be at the precipice. I made the photograph in one of my favorite light conditions. It had been foggy — the thick, gray kind of fog — but now it was thinning and opening up to let in soft, filtered sunlight. The fog still partially obscures the more distant trees on the far side of the little bay.
“Lake, Forest, and Ridges” — Ellery Lake and surrounding peaks, Sierra Nevada.
I previously shared another photograph made from this same vantage point. That photograph is more tightly cropped and does not include sky. By using a somewhat shorter focal length I was able to include a bit more of the forest at lower left and the rising ridge at the right, though these choices required me to include the sky in the frame.
“Old Cypress” — An old Monterey cypress tree at Point Lobos, California.
The Monterey cypress trees at Point Lobos are rugged and diverse specimens. This is no forest of uniform Sierra Nevada trees. Each tree seems to have its own personality, formed by its exposure to light, proximity to cliffs, age, and the wind. Aside from the fact that they often grow in groves, many of them remind me of the stunted and twisted trees found at timberline in the highest mountains.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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